A Challenge...Ideas Anyone?

Here's a Special Kitty challenge that has been driving Mom crazy.
Lucy Liu needs to get up & move around & exercise to help stimulate & strengthen her right rear leg. As you may know, she has peripheral nerve damage in her right rear from being hit by a car. The vet said Lucy's leg is showing improvement in muscle tone. Mom's putting Vaseline on Lucy's left rear pads to soften them because they got thick from not being used and a couple of them cracked & were painful. However the vet also said Lucy still has to do physical therapy even though she has cracked pads. The vet said Lucy's pads will heal fast if Mom puts Vaseline on them at least once or twice a day.

The only way so far to get Lucy up & moving is when Mom takes her out of her crate & sets her down on the floor so Lucy has to run across the floor to get back to her crate. Mom's tried to get her to chase the laser light & other similar toys. Lucy ignores the toys. Righty & I even tried to get Lucy into a good Turbo Scratcher game. Lucy just laid there & watched us. When Mom puts her on a cat tree, Lucy just lays there waiting for Mom to get her down.

The vet & Mom have a plan to try to make Lucy swim in the bathtub. However, you know how most of us cats are (with the exception of Velcro-I think he's demented-he LIKES being in a tub of water). We usually hate water.

Anybody got any ideas of how to make Lucy get up & move around on dry carpet so she won't have to swim in WATER?

Hi Uno! We kitties sure don't like the bathtub (except for my little brofur Lucy- he must be crazy! MOL!). Have you tried catnip? Maybe getting her on the floor and sprinkling loose catnip around and see if she will roll/play in it? Even our oldest sisfurs and brofurs like to do that! What about also setting up some levels so she would have to get up to her crate? You could set up some small levels so she wouldn't have to jump high and risk hurting her legs or paws, but it would give her exercise. Love n bonks to you! xoxo

Catnip has already been tried (fresh catnip, its a tough plant, one of the few that still is green & alive near the ground.) Lucy mostly just rubbed her face on it & ate it.

Your idea about putting Lucy Liu in the top crate instead of the bottom crate, however is a great idea. I had her in a bottom crate in a stack of 2 crates so she could interact with the other cats. (Gabe is in the top crate for monitoring right now to make sure he doesn't have a FUS problem-he got jailed last night for urinating on the carpet in front of me.) Since Lucy already has proven she is friends with the other cats & there are no conflicts at all, I can easily switch her to the top bunk & put Gabe in the bottom one.

I have a step stool with about 3 steps that I can easily set in front of the crates when it's time to put Lucy back into the crate. This step stool is a good height for the purpose too.

So Tabatha, your idea of moving Lucy Liu to the top bunk & using steps to make her exercise more by climbing up to the top bunk is an EXCELLENT IDEA!

I'm going to make the switch & set this up for Lucy today. It sounds like it will work out well though & if it does, Lucy owes you a thanks, Tabatha, for saving her from the feline version of water torture (Velcro doesn't agree-he loves swimming but then he's an oddball kitty-he loves things such as eating blueberries too, the only cat who will steal blueberries from me when I'm eating them!)

I'll let everybody know how it works out. When I get my camera lens working right or repaired if necessary(S5-is Canon-camera lens suddenly won't open or close, it stuck itself open for some reason) & if Lucy cooperates, I'll try to get a photo of Lucy in action using the setup.

Thank you very much for this great idea, Tabatha!!!

This sort of positive sharing of ideas for working with our Special Kitties is exactly one of the reasons I created this group!

Sorry to say, Lucy refuses to go up the steps to her crate, but as told in her diary and elsewhere here, she's somehow managed to find other ways to exercise & strengthen her right rear leg. In her diary I told about her first jump. I also caught a pic of her in the lower treehouse of the new cat tree immediately after she'd jumped, turned around, and lay still enough that I could take the picture. She closed her eyes right when I snapped the pic. It looks like she's asleep although she's not. I put that pic on her profile, it's her first pic now.

I wonder if there was something else such as problems from dietary deficiency also going on with Lucy Liu before she came. Since she's been here she's picked up weight & generally much better muscle tone overall and her coat now has much more shine in it than it did before.

Lucy Liu's giving me another challenge now. As you can see in the closeup photo of her right rear leg in her profile, she has developed a degree of toe contracture, resulting in her curling her toes under. She does bear a little weight on the right rear but because of the toe contracture, when she puts her foot down on the ground, her weight is on the tops of her toes instead of her pads. She has to do physical therapy to try to relax the joint on top of her right hind foot immediately behind the toes and also to help stretch the toes.

After Lucy gained freedom of the house, she would often lay at the foot of my bed. But then she had to have antibiotics after she developed an abscess under her chin. She also has to use either metal or glass dishes, the abscess started out as a reaction from eating out of a hard plastic food dish. Lucy hated having to take the antibiotics. She started avoiding me and resenting being restrained for her physical therapy although her therapy doesn't seem to cause her discomfort. I've tried scratching her neck, giving her treats and doing other things she likes during her therapy, to try to make the experience more positive for her. But when she sees me coming to get her for her therapy, and somehow she always knows!, she runs, hides, and does everything she can do to avoid me. Now she tends to spend alot of time hiding in her cave under the couch or in one of several other hiding places around the house and only comes out when I'm not in the same room with her.

I can't lock Lucy up in the crate again because she's getting so much beneficial exercise being loose in the house. If only she would somehow manage to straighten her toes even a bit on her own so her right rear pads would take even a little of her weight instead of the tops of her toes, she might be able to straighten her toes again naturally through exercise. So far though, she still needs the physical therapy. The vet felt that therapy would be the best option. The joint does loosen up and the toes do become a bit more flexible for a short time after each therapy session, so the foot is responding at least somewhat. How do I counteract Lucy's negative reaction, running, hiding etc? She was very loving and social with me until she had to take antibiotics twice a day for two weeks.